Caruso is the AI-native platform private markets managers use to onboard investors, raise capital and run the books - all in one place.
Private markets move trillions of dollars, and a surprising amount of that money is still tracked by hand. Caruso is a bet that the back office of private funds is finally ready to be rebuilt.
Founded in 2023 by Mark Hurley and Oliver Shaw, Caruso builds fund administration software for private markets - the real estate, private credit and private equity funds that raise money from investors and then have to account for every dollar of it. Its headquarters sit in Sydney, its product and engineering team works out of Auckland, and in 2026 it opened a growth office in Dallas.
The problem Caruso targets is unglamorous but expensive. Fund managers have historically stitched together spreadsheets, email and a handful of disconnected point tools to handle investor onboarding, capital calls, distributions, tax statements and net asset value calculations. Data lives in five places at once, and reconciling it is much of the job.
Caruso's answer is a single system - what the company calls a single source of truth for LP and fund data. Onboarding, compliance, CRM, capital raising, registry and investor reporting all sit on one platform, connected by APIs and, increasingly, automated by AI agents working alongside human fund accountants.
"We're removing the admin from fund administration," says chief executive Mark Hurley. It is a plain sentence for an industry fond of jargon, and it doubles as the company's entire strategy: take manual, repetitive back-office work and let software - and increasingly AI - carry it.
We're removing the admin from fund administration.Mark Hurley - CEO & Co-Founder, Caruso
Caruso can be run as software, taken as an outsourced service, or split between the two - so managers choose how much of the back office they keep in-house.
Centralizes investor and fund data across onboarding, compliance, CRM, capital raising and reporting - API-first, with no vendor lock-in.
Automated net asset value calculation, unit pricing, financial reporting and tax preparation for private funds.
Capital calls, distributions, tax statements and treasury services handled inside the platform.
Digital subscription documents, AML/KYC and biometric identity verification, plus automated investor communications.
A portal where investors see statements, documents, distributions and transactions for the funds they hold.
Optional professional fund administration, pairing human fund accountants with AI agents for managers who'd rather not run it themselves.
Over roughly twelve months, the assets Caruso administers climbed about tenfold to more than $55 billion, while revenue grew 400%. The company reached these figures within three years of founding.
The growth came the way it tends to in back-office software - not by adding features, but by removing work. As more managers moved funds onto the platform, Caruso's assets under administration grew faster than its headcount, an effect the company attributes to pairing human accountants with AI automation.
Some announcements cite figures as high as $80B in assets under administration.
Indicative visualization of ~10x growth reported over ~12 months. Interim points illustrative.
Led by Icehouse Ventures and GD1, with participation from Balmain - an existing investor that is also a customer. The round valued Caruso at $55 million and funds product development, AI-automation work and hiring across the US, Australia and New Zealand.
"AI-native fund administration is going to become the standard globally."
Jason Huljich - CEO, Centuria Capital GroupCaruso's growth represents "just the beginning" of the transformation of the fund administration industry.
Jack McQuire - Icehouse VenturesWhere incumbents leave managers reconciling data across separate tools, Caruso keeps investor and fund data in a single platform.
Run it in-house, outsource to Caruso's fund accountants, or mix the two - a flexibility many software-only or services-only rivals don't offer.
AI agents work alongside human accountants, so managers can grow assets without a matching rise in operations headcount.
Designed specifically for real estate, private credit and private equity funds rather than adapted from generic finance tooling.
Modern API connectivity and no vendor lock-in, letting funds integrate Caruso with the rest of their stack.
Security certification and controls aimed at the compliance bar large fund managers require.
Mark Hurley and Oliver Shaw start Caruso to build an AI-native fund administration platform, with engineering in Auckland.
Software for onboarding, capital raising, fund accounting and registry takes shape as the first fund managers sign on.
Assets under administration climb roughly tenfold and revenue grows 400% as more managers and funds move onto the platform.
Caruso raises US$6.5M at a $55M valuation, opens in Dallas and passes $55B in assets under administration across 900+ funds.
Caruso's users are private markets fund managers, spanning small funds and large enterprises alike. More than 80 managers run over 900 funds and 80,000 investors on the platform. Its best-known reference customer is Centuria Capital Group, an ASX-listed manager whose chief executive has publicly backed the shift to AI-native administration.
The market it sits in is the operational infrastructure of private capital - a space long served by traditional fund administrators and, more recently, software-led players such as Juniper Square, Allvue, Carta and the big outsourcers like SS&C, Citco and Apex. Caruso positions itself against both those incumbents and the do-it-yourself mix of spreadsheets and point tools many funds still rely on.
That timing matters. As private markets firms look to modernize systems that have depended on manual workflows, demand has grown for tools built for the way these funds actually operate. Caruso's pitch - save time, impress investors, grow AUM - is aimed squarely at managers who want to scale assets without scaling their back office at the same rate.
Interviews and product demos: search "Caruso fund administration" on YouTube - the company publishes platform walkthroughs and founder talks. Direct video links were not confirmed at time of writing.